The Perfect Time to “Renovate” Your Online Solution

Even though it may have seemed perfect and able to deliver a smooth user experience at first, most of us realize only during the course of time that things could have been done much better. Thus, most of us experience a website “renovation” at times, which is usually imposed by either the increasingly agile competition or by the ever-growing demands of the customers.

As Mario Mokarram, Content developer and systems administrator at Abiertoware, believes, it was only a short while ago that websites with plenty of eye-candy dominated the market. However, times are changing, and it seems that design is no longer enough in itself in order to attract customers. Nowadays, a website needs to be a kind of self-propelled machine, one that’s constantly able to drive sales and capture customers’ attention. As businesses are constantly evolving and increasing in assets, the market simply needs to adapt to this change.

He further asserts that in our days, a website is no more than a static product, but it can rather be regarded as a living being, one that needs to adapt to the needs of the consumers as they emerge. When we speak about renovating a website we usually take into consideration the different things which contribute to its making. However, the process is in fact more complex and people should not consider “renovating” a website just because it’s possible for them to do so. Renovation is actually a relative to the performance offered by a site, and it has to be combined with user feedback and thorough user analysis in order to deliver the expected results, states Hemant Charya, Principal Consulant at Ridivi Consulting.

Some of the key components which are to take place into the optimization process include functionality enhancements, upgrades, and component modifications. In a similar manner, the user experience part of a website implies several changes as well, including a migration of the essential components (e.g. presentation frameworks, server, DB, etc.), optimizations, upgrades, and so on. Each component is subject to the evaluation of the web designer, which is to decide whether that component is useful to the website or not. Moreover, before considering an element as part of the equation, one needs to pay extra attention to its pros and cons.

For instance, let’s assume that the “renovation” term refers to the UX part of the website. The look-and-feel side is perhaps one of the most important elements when speaking about a website’s design, as this part is the first one which comes in contact with the user. Therefore, an acceptable quality level is required to be thought before the UX part rolls out into action. For this reason, we are able to differentiate two types of websites:

1. Small sites, which feature a low amount of content that is split into different categories. These sites usually feature low or even no external integration points, and should be “renovated” once every two years. Websites in this niche may include small business pages (photographer-related websites, designer portfolios, etc.) corporate websites, and so on.

2. Medium-to-large sites, which feature highly dense content, plenty of external integration points, and a wide variety of visitors interested in different niches. Websites in this category may include business-listings, retails, classified websites, and so on. Such websites should be “renovated” once every five years or even longer depending on the market requirements.

“Renovation” consists in a process of adapting to the market’s needs and increasing your business’s profitability. Every website has to be renovated at least once after its main stream launch, and when that happens several elements should be taken into account, as detailed above.